Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

Well, it’s the day after the US Presidential (and many other) elections. I’m not going to dwell on the politics, other than to say I’m not thrilled that Obama won but I wouldn’t be thrilled if McCain had won, either. The country is in for interesting times ahead, let’s just hope that we as a nation and we as a planet don’t do anything to screw up our long term — meaning centuries and millennia, not merely the next ten years — prospects.

Coincidentally, today is Guy Fawkes Day, a British (and some other parts of the Commonwealth) celebration of the capture of Guy Fawkes, apprehended on this day in 1605 trying to blow up Parliament (specifically, the House of Lords) and assassinate King James I during the Opening of Parliament. In other words, he was a terrorist, and the Gunpowder Plot (as the scheme became known) was devised by religious extremists (Catholic, in this case). Sounds depressingly familiar, with only a few details changed.

The punishment for Fawkes and his co-conspirators, by the way, was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, the traditional punishment for treason. It’s rather unpleasant: hung until not quite dead, disembowelled, and then the body cut into four parts, plus the head. (It’s even worse than that, see Wikipedia for the gory (literally) details.) After they were found guilty at trial, of course. (The confession forced by torture perhaps excusable by Fawkes having been caught in the act of attempting to detonate the powder.)

And on that cheery thought about how far we’ve come in just over 400 years, I’ll observe that the last time a Presidential Election actually fell on Guy Fawkes Day was 1996, and the next time will be 2024.